


The Flight of the Free

by Valgus



Category: Free!
Genre: Alternate Universe - Fantasy, Alternate Universe - Medieval, Animal Transformation, Dragon!Mako. uWu, Drama, M/M, Should I write that in Relationship part too?, With upcoming side dish of SouRin.
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-11-17
Updated: 2015-11-17
Packaged: 2018-05-02 01:57:39
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,943
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5229515
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Valgus/pseuds/Valgus
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Haru, a farmer in remote area of a mountain who longed for sea and fish, met a brown dragon one day. Though he didn't think that dragon was real, he still brought home the injured creature. Little did Haru knew that the dragon would change his life in the most unthinkable way possible.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Flight of the Free

Nanase Haruka was a farmer in remote area of a mountain. He grew radish and rice. Travellers used to pass by his house since his house was located exactly on the middle of shortcut mid-forest road from one village to another. Haru’s late parents built a second house to get extra money from travellers who need to stay overnight between two days journey from one village to other village on the other side of the mountain.

Though he grew radish and rice, Haru’s favourite food was fish. He could only obtain river fish, though he preferred sea fish. There were many fishes in the river half-an hour away of walk from his farm. The other thing that Haru liked besides farming and fishing was swimming. In fact, he favoured swimming above farming and fishing. Too bad he couldn’t make a living out of swimming. Maybe in the future, people would be able to make a living from swimming, though Haru wasn’t sure how.

After a big harvest, Haru went to village to trade some of his radish and rice. He always bought some sea fish in the village. Haru also stayed overnight and listened to the story of people who had ever been to the sea as he enjoyed his dinner at the inn’s restaurant.

Haru wanted to live by the sea more than anything. There would be wide blue water and sea fish for him all the time. But the mountain he lived in was way too far from any beach. Haru’s possession beside the land, farm, house, and a grey horse by the name of Dolphin was just a bunch of clothes and furniture. He didn’t think Dolphin would be able to carry everything, nor he believed he could simply leave the mountain he had been living his whole life. Beach life for him seemed to be a utopia, a daydream for Haru to have on his relaxed time, he thought on the inn the night he stayed on the village.

So Haru returned to his farm.

After planting new seeds of radish and rice, Haru went to the river to swim. He might try to get some fish as well, but he just bought sea fishes from village.

Haru swam following the course, enjoying the beautiful sky, sun, and trees, enjoying water, until Haru bumped into something hard.

He was very sure that there were no boulders on that part of the river. Haru turned his head around, patting his slightly aching of the back of his head, and gaped.

Whatever it was, it was larger than the biggest horse Haru had ever saw. It had four legs and tail like lizard. With long neck and head with snout shaped a little like horse, Haru might think that he was seeing a monster horse, only that the creature’s fur was absent and had scales instead. Though the scale wasn’t like fish’s scale at all. They were big, with rock-like texture, and in the colour of young bark of tree.

Haru hadn’t seen it before, but it also had wings; large, rubbery, featherless bat-like wings. Haru instinctively stepped backward as he heard the creature growled. It slowly opened its eyes to reveal a pair of green, large eyes. The glint made Haru remember of a beautiful stone called emerald he saw once in the city he visited long ago with his parents when they were still alive. It had smell of iron and dirt so strong even though they were in the water.

Haru swallowed.

It opened his mouth to reveal rows of fangs, with its smallest one bigger than Haru’s thumb.

Haru’s first instinct was to run, but then remembered that he escaped faster in the water. So Haru swam against the course, gaping and heaving on the water as he heard the creature behind him made very noisy sound of water splashing, running after him.

Haru had never been so nauseous and cold in his life. He was swimming for his life and couldn’t hear anything but the sound of water splashing made by himself and the creature behind him.

Dragon. Haru remembered the name of such creature. He saw them on one of the fantasy scroll brought by traveller who claimed to be storyteller. But real dragon doesn’t exist, does it?

After a while, Haru could no longer hear the sound of the dragon ran on the water. He stopped swimming and looked backward to see that the creature had climbed to the side of the river, ignoring Haru. It slipped as it tried to heave its body out of the water and there were dark, liquid with iron smell all over the water the dragon had its body in.

Then Haru suddenly realised that the dragon was bleeding. The iron smell came from the blood.

The dragon didn’t seem to pay Haru any more attention. After several pathetic attempts, it finally climbed to the ground and made his way to the forest, limping and leaving trail of blood and water.

Haru left the river as well and followed the dragon. He knew it was the stupidest thing to do, considering the dragon might be able to finish him in two bites, but it was injured.

When the dragon heard the sound of Haru’s footsteps, it tried to hide itself behind a tree… which didn’t really hide anything considering it had wings and was at least two metres long without the lizard-like tail. It was so comical Haru couldn’t help but laugh.

The dragon seemed to be attracted by the sound of Haru’s laughter. He peered, moving his big, scale-covered head and looked at Haru with his cat-like green eyes. Haru felt his cheeks heated up a little. He never laughed like that in his life. Haru didn’t generally laugh at all.

Staring into Haru’s eyes, the dragon made high-pitched grunted sound. Haru stared back at those pair of emerald orbs. He recognised the glint of tears. The dragon must have been in so much pain.

Haru stepped closer very slowly, his hand rose in giving up gesture. “I’m not going to hurt you.”

The dragon looked back made a nodding movement.

“I have some grass that could be used to heal your wound faster back in my farm, though I don’t know whether it can heal you too. I know it can heal Dolphin, my horse.”

The dragon made coughing-like grunts at the name of Haru’s horse. A second later, Haru realised that the dragon was laughing. So it could understand human speech.

“Come,” said Haru, who just realised he was still naked, but he was never been conscious about being naked in front of other people, let alone an animal.

After fetching his clothes, Haru lead the way back to his farm.

Taking care of the dragon’s entire wounds took him all day and night. It was way past midnight when Haru finished patting the last crushed grass into the wound on the dragon’s cheek. He wanted to cry as he did it the entire time. Beside mark of swords, he also found arrows and knifes stuck into the dragon’s body.

Haru had heard about how dragon was heartless, menacing creature that flied around and burned villages, but this dragon tried to hide when Haru followed him. Maybe not all the dragon was the same, Haru thought, just like not all the horse were the same.

Tired and achy Haru bid the dragon goodnight, leaving it by the empty stable used to store Dolphin’s late mother, and returned to his house. Exhausted, Haru slept right after he cleaned his face and hand.

The next afternoon, he woke up and ran to fill bucket so the dragon could drink. When Haru got to the stable, he could hear Dolphin’s restlessness to get out. He apologised to his grey horse and promised to bring Dolphin for a run after feeding the dragon.

But when Haru peered through the bars to the stable, he couldn’t see any brown-scaled creature with wings. Instead, a man slept in the same curling, cat-like position with his dragon, his body tattered with scars, fresh and new. His hair had the same shade of brown with the dragon’s scale. He yawned, stretched, and woke up like a cat.

He froze when he saw Haru, then looked around, probably realising that he wasn’t as big as before. Haru somehow felt embarrassed to witness such moment. The man was probably his age, with droopy eyes and body larger, more muscled than Haru. His eyes, however, were in the same emerald-like glint with the dragon.

He opened his mouth, “I’m sorry. I turn back into human when I ran out of energy. This way, I could heal myself faster.” His fangs on his human teeth were slightly longer than normal human, Haru noticed, but he couldn’t say anything out of shock.

“You’re a dragon,” he said that after sometime.

“Yes. Dragon is mystical creature. We have more than one form,” he stood up, naked and muscle and torn and battered but undeniably beautiful. Haru could sense something lurked behind the man with broad shoulders. He remembered how dragon could fly and burn down a whole village if he wanted to.

Haru found nothing to do but to cower in fear.

The dragon man stopped just before him, smiling down at Haru, “Thank you for saving me. My name is Makoto.”

Haru didn’t know dragon had name. Maybe Dolphin had name for himself, only in horse language, “I’m Haruka.”

Makoto smiled, tilting his head to one side, “Thank you for saving my life, Haru-chan.”

“Oi…” protested Haru.

Makoto leaned forward and hugged Haru. He was extremely heavy and Haru was quickly out of breath.

“Haru,” mumbled Makoto. His voice was dry and had a little grunt on it even though it was relatively in higher pitch than Haru.

“Yes, um, Makoto?” responded Haru, who wasn’t sure that he was actually being hugged by a dragon.

“I’m hungry.”

Haru didn’t know what to say to that for a while. “What do you eat?”

Makoto pulled back, “Deer, if I could find any.”

Haru looked at Makoto. He wanted to say he had no deer, but Makoto stepped away and walked outside the stable.

“I’ll get some deer for you too, Haru-chan,” Makoto said, running into the sunlight, naked and smiling, before suddenly transformed back into a dragon, wings spreading and flapping to the mountain.

Haru’s jaw was hanging as he looked up at the sky.

*)*

Somewhere on a quiet road in the middle of the forest before Haru's mountain, two men on horses exchanged words without really looking at each other.

“Rin, you don’t have to accompany me," the one with the dark hair and tanned skin grunted.

The redhaired man by the other horse grunted back, “I don’t like it, Sousuke. The empress sent you to hunt down a dragon, right? That task is too dangerous. You won’t win against a dragon.”

“You don’t have to follow me just because I’m your childhood friend.”

“I’m worried about you! Think about yourself a little.”

“I’ll be fine. I’ll kill that brown dragon in no time.”

At the same time, Makoto returned to Haru’s house, turned back into human the moment he touched the ground, hugging a large, dead stag whose blood dirtying his chest.

“Haru-chan, this is the deer I promised you. I could bring more, but I don’t think you’ll finish this one before it goes bad,” Makoto smiled the sweetest smile, showing his fang.

Haru looked at Makoto and said, through flat tone and deadpan expression, “Welcome home.”

To that, Makoto nodded, smiled, and replied, “I’m home.”

**Author's Note:**

> I think it's still rather all over the place and I apologise for that. It's just that I have an upcoming wave of business until Christmas so I don't know whether I'll have time to write before then. I just really want to share this one because I kind of really like it. Maybe I will edit it as I go along.
> 
> Also, I already have the draft of everything in my head. I hope this will end quickly in 5 chapters or less. 
> 
> Thank you for reading so far! If this makes you happy even just a little, I will be very happy too. I hope I'll see you again on the next chapter. oUo


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